Minnesota Vikings

• Inaugural season: 1961
• Home field: US Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Owner: Zygmunt Wilf
• Team colors: Purple, gold, and white

Overview

The Minnesota Vikings are a National Football League (NFL) franchise that plays in the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Though all of Minnesota embraces the Vikings as the state’s preeminent professional franchise, the team is headquartered in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The team has a storied history that includes playing in four Super Bowls from 1969 to 1976. While Minnesota has been unable to equal its conference dominance of the 1970s, the team has remained a perennial playoff contender.

The team namethe Vikingsis intended to reflect both the strong Scandinavian heritage of the Upper Midwest and the perception of Vikings as aggressive, hard-edged warriors. Like their heated rivals, the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears, the Minnesota Vikings are a source of fierce pride for its fans. The Minnesota metropolitan market is among the biggest in the Midwest, ranking behind only Chicago.

The Vikings began playing at the US Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis in 2016. Costing more than $1 billion to build, the facility seats 66,655 people and features a fixed roof that allows the team to play in comfortable temperatures despite the city’s cold winter climate. The stadium has enabled the Vikings to play in front of larger crowds than the old Metrodome, which was the team’s home from 1982–2013. Though the US Bank Stadium is one of the smaller NFL facilities, it is relatively new and one of only three fixed-roof stadiums in the NFL, alongside the New Orleans Superdome and Detroit’s Ford Field. The loyalty of the Vikings’ fans had helped maintain the franchise's financial position. In 2023, Forbes magazine valued the Vikings at $4.65 billion, making it the sixteenth most valuable in the NFL.

History

The team's early history reflects the conflicts between the NFL and its principal rival in the 1960s, the American Football League (AFL). Though Minneapolis-St. Paul had been home to several professional football franchises in the 1920s and 1930setween 1931 and 1961 the city did not host any teams from any of the four major professional sports. When several wealthy businessmen, led by Bud Adams and Lamar Hunt, announced plans to establish a new football league to rival the NFL, Minnesota seemed like a logical candidate for a team. The drive for a team was led by five Minneapolis business leaders: Bill Boyer, H.P. Skoglund, and Max Winter. In 1959, the AFL awarded the men a Minnesota franchise in its new league, ending a nearly thirty-year professional sports drought in the state.

However, the NFL sought to undermine the AFL before its inaugural season, and offered the Minnesota investor group an opportunity to host an expansion franchise in the NFL. The group jumped at the chance to participate in the already-established NFL. Though similar deals were made to other AFL cities, the Minnesota group was the only one to forfeit its AFL membership, and its AFL franchise was awarded to Oakland.

After selecting the team name, official team colors, and iconic Viking logo, Norm Van Brocklin, a former Los Angeles Rams and Philadelphia Eagles player, was selected as the team’s first coach. Van Brocklin lacked coaching experience and formed a tense relationship with the team’s quarterback, Fran Tarkenton. These factors, combined with an expansion team roster of aging veterans and rookies, led to a tough start for the Vikings. Van Brocklin eventually compiled a 29–51–4 record and no playoff appearances before quitting after the 1966 season. The Vikings eventually tapped Bud Grant for the job in 1967. Grant was a highly successful coach in the Canadian Football League (CFL) and had been the Vikings’ first choice for the job in 1961, but he had turned them down.

Grant would spend seventeen seasons with the Vikings, ultimately leading the team to a 158–96–5 regular season record and 10–12 in the postseason. Under Grant, the team entered a golden age of Vikings football. Within two seasons, Grant had turned Minnesota around from a 4–9–1 team in Van Brocklin’s last season to an 8–6 record and its first playoff appearance in 1968. Grant quickly built upon the success of the 1968 team by leading them to a 12–2 regular season record and an appearance in the 1969 Super Bowl. The team was led by its outstanding defense, which earned the nickname of the “Purple People Eaters” after the color of the team’s jerseys. Despite being heavy favorites in the game, the Viking lost, 23–7, to the Kansas City Chiefs.

Throughout the next fourteen seasons, Grant led the Vikings to three more Super Bowls in 1973, 1974, and 1976; unfortunately, all three appearances also ended in disappointing losses. Perhaps its consistency within the NFC Central division was even more impressive than its Super Bowl appearances. Between 1968 and 1980, the Vikings won all but two division titles (1972, 1981). The team's success spurred the Minnesota legislature to build the climate-controlled Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome to replace Metropolitan Stadium, which was both an outdoor stadium with limited seating capacity. The Vikings played their first season in the new Metrodome beginning in 1982.

By 1982, the last players around which the elite Vikings teams had been built had retired. On January 27, 1984, Grant announced his retirement, severing the last remaining link to the team’s glory days. Minnesota selected Vikings assistant Lee Steckel to replace the legendary Grant. The Steckel experiment would be brief; after the team went 3–13—its worst record since 1962—Steckel was fired and Grant emerged from retirement to coach the Vikings through one last 7–9 season, his worst record since his inaugural season. Grant again retired after the season permanently.

His new replacement was Jerry Burns, another Vikings assistant. Burns was more successful than Steckel and led the Vikings to three playoff appearances in his six years in charge. His best year was the strike-shortened 1987 season, when he guided them to the NFC Championship game, where Minnesota lost to the Washington Redskins 17–10. After Burns retired from coaching after an 8–8 season in 1991, the Vikings named Stanford University coach Dennis Green as the team’s fifth coach.

Green oversaw a second era of Vikings greatness. Although he could not return Minnesota to the Super Bowl, he guided them to eight playoff appearances during his nearly ten-year tenure as head coach. This period included appearances in the NFC Championship game in 1998 and 2000. During the 2001 season, Green’s Viking struggled through a 5–10 start to the season, and he was fired with one game left. Assistant coach Mike Tice was promoted to head coach, and led the team through four undistinguished seasons between 2002 and 2005. After the 2005 season, the Vikings were sold to an ownership group led by German-born billionaire Zygmunt Wilf.

Tice’s unremarkable stretch with the Vikings would prove an omen of future things. Over the next thirteen seasons, the Vikings went through three coaches, two of whom were fired before the end of the season. Former Eagles offensive coordinator Brad Childress had a career record of 40–37 from 2006–2010. He was fired midway through the 2010 season and replaced by defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier. Frazier was given three full seasons at the helm but could not build on the limited success of Tice or Childress. After the 2013 season, he was fired after a 21–33–1 record that included one playoff appearance in 2012.

In 2014, the Vikings hired Mike Zimmer as their ninth head coach. Zimmer, the former Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator, improved on his predecessors' performance, going 48–33–1 in his first five seasons as coach. This included two playoff berths and a conference championship appearance in 2017.

In 2018, the Vikings signed Kirk Cousins as quarterback to a record contract. The Vikings, nonetheless, regressed, registering an 8–7–1 mark for the 2018 season. The on-field performance of the Vikings continued to drop as they failed to make the playoffs in either 2021 or 2022. This led to the firing of Mike Zimmer as head coach. He finished with an overall record of 72–56 for a .562 winning percentage. Kevin O'Connell became the Vikings' head coach in 2022. At thirty-seven years old at the time of his hiring, he was one of the youngest in the league to hold the head coach position. Another change in quarterback then came upon Cousins signing with another team in free agency in 2024.

Notable players

By 2024, the Minnesota Vikings had twenty-two players elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Twelve played all or most of their careers with the Vikings. The face of the team during its glory years was Fran Tarkenton (1961–1966, 1972–1978). Tarkenton was a nine-time Pro Bowler, six of which occurred when he played with the Vikings. Over his eighteen-year career, Tarkenton threw for 47,003 yards and 342 touchdowns, which stood as all-time NFL marks for nearly two decades after his retirement. By the 2020s, Tarkenton was still ranked fourteenth all-time in passing yards and eleventh in touchdown passes.

Other key offensive contributors for the Vikings include:

• Seven-time Pro Bowler and offensive tackle Gary Zimmerman (1986–1992)
• Twelve-time consecutive Pro Bowler guard Randall McDaniel (1988–1999)
• Running backs Robert Smith (1993–2000)who ran for over 1,000 yards in four consecutive seasons between 1997 and 2000
• Seven-time Pro Bowler Adrian Peterson (2007–2016)
• Wide receivers Ahmad Rashad (1976–1982) and Randy Moss (1998–2004, 2010)

Zimmerman, McDaniel, and Moss were later elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In 2020, guard Steve Hutchinson, who was with the team from 2006 to 2011, also became a Hall of Famer.

On the defensive side, Vikings greats include defensive tackle Alan Page (1967–1978)—the NFL MVP in 1971—and defensive ends Carl Eller (1964–1978) and Jim Marshall (1961–1979). Eller and Page are in the Hall of Fame.

Bibliography

Bruton, Jim. Vikings 50: All-Time Greatest Players in Franchise History. Triumph, 2012.

Garman, Bob. “Power Ranking the 25 Greatest Vikings of All Time.” Bleacher Report, 14 Mar. 2013, bleacherreport.com/articles/1546795-power-ranking-the-25-greatest-vikings-of-all-time#slide0/. Accessed 31 July 2019.

"Minnesota Vikings." Minnesotavikings.com, www.vikings.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2024.

“Minnesota Vikings Sports Team History.” Sports Team History, sportsteamhistory.com/minnesota-vikings. Accessed 23 July 2024.

“Minnesota Vikings Team History.” Pro Football Hall of Fame, www.profootballhof.com/teams/minnesota-vikings/team-history. Accessed 23 July 2024.

“NFL Attendance—2023.” ESPN, www.espn.com/nfl/attendance. Accessed 21 July 2024.

"NFL Team Valuations." Forbes, 2023, www.forbes.com/lists/nfl-valuations/. Accessed 14 Aug. 2024.